“You could be right. Models for paintings sometimes pose nude—in most cases actually nude, in some cases more metaphorically. The artist wants to view the model’s essence, meaning he has to strip away the clothed, outer appearance. To do that, of course, takes great powers of observation and a sharp intuition.”
Menshiki spread his hands on his lap and seemed to be inspecting them. He then looked up. “I heard that you don’t use a live model when you paint a portrait.”
“That’s right. I meet the subject once and have a long talk with him, but don’t have him model live for me.”
“Is there a reason for that?”
“No real reason. I’ve just found, through experience, that things go more smoothly that way. When we first meet I concentrate as much as I can, trying to get a take on the subject’s looks, expressions, quirks, and tendencies, and brand those into my memory. Once I’ve done that, it’s just a question of reproducing them from memory.”
“That’s very intriguing,” Menshiki said. “So, days later you take the memory you’ve burned into your brain, rearrange all that as an image, and reproduce it as a work of art. You must have a gift to do that—to have such extraordinary visual recall.”
“I wouldn’t call it a gift, exactly. More of a skill set, I’d say.”
“Maybe that’s why, when I saw some of the portraits you’ve done, I sensed something unique in them. Compared with other standard portraits—portraits done purely as commodities. The way everything’s reproduced so vividly, you might say…”
He took a sip of coffee, took a light-cream linen handkerchief from his jacket pocket, and wiped his mouth. “But this time, unusually, you’ll be using a model—with me in front of you, in other words—as you do the portrait.”
“Exactly. At your request.”
He nodded. “Truthfully, I was curious. About how it feels to become part of a painting, right in front of your eyes. I wanted to actually experience it. Not simply have my painting done, but to experience it as a kind of exchange.”
“An exchange?”
“Between the two of us, you and me.”
I was silent. The meaning of the expression “an exchange” eluded me for a moment.
“We exchange parts of us with each other,” Menshiki explained. “I offer something of myself, and you offer something of yourself. It doesn’t have to be something valuable. It can be simple, like a kind of sign.”
“Like children exchange pretty seashells?”
“Exactly.”
I thought about this. “Sounds interesting, but the problem is I don’t have any nice seashells to offer you.”
“You’re not so comfortable doing it this way? Are you intentionally avoiding that kind of exchange? Is that why you don’t use live models? If that’s true, then I can—”
“No—that’s not it. I don’t use models because I don’t need them. That’s all. I’m not trying to avoid an interchange between people. I’ve studied painting for a long time, and have used live models more times than I can remember. If you don’t mind the drudgery of sitting still in a hard chair for hours at a time, I’m totally fine with you posing for me.”
“I don’t mind,” Menshiki said, spreading his palms up, lightly lifting them upward. “Then why don’t we commence the drudgery?”
* * *
—
We went into the studio. I brought over a dining room chair and had Menshiki sit in that. I let him assume whatever posture he wanted. I sat on an old wooden stool facing him (no doubt the stool Tomohiko Amada used when he painted), and started sketching with a soft pencil. I needed to decide on a basic approach of how I was going to reproduce his face on canvas.
“Is it boring to sit there? If you’d like, we could listen to some music,” I said.
“If it doesn’t bother you, I’d love to hear some music,” Menshiki said.
“Why don’t you choose something from the shelf in the living room.”
He spent about five minutes perusing the selection of records and returned with a four-disc boxed set of LPs of Georg Solti conducting a performance of Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. The orchestra was the Vienna Philharmonic, the singers Régine Crespin and Yvonne Minton.
“Do you like Der Rosenkavalier?” he asked me.
“I’ve never heard it.”
“It’s an unusual opera. The plot’s critical, of course, like with all operas, but with this one even if you don’t know the plot it’s easy to give yourself over to the music and be completely enveloped by that world. The world of supreme bliss Strauss achieved at the peak of his powers. When it was first performed, people criticized it as nostalgic, unadventurous even, where in reality the music is quite progressive and uninhibited. He was influenced by Wagner, but Strauss creates his own strange, unique musical realm. Once you get into this music you can’t get enough of it. I usually prefer Karajan’s or Erich Kleiber’s version, and have never heard Solti’s. If it’s all right with you, I’d like to take this opportunity to hear it.”
“Of course. Let’s listen to it.”
* * *
—
He placed the record on the turntable, lowered the needle, and carefully adjusted the volume on the amp. He went back to his chair, settled into a proper pose, and concentrated on the music flowing from the speakers. I did some quick sketches in my sketchbook of his face from several angles. His face was overall nicely put together, the features distinctive enough that I didn’t find it hard to capture the unique details of each. In the space of thirty minutes I completed five sketches from different angles. But when I examined them again, I was struck by an odd, helpless feeling. My sketches had accurately captured what was distinctive about his face, yet there was nothing about them beyond the sense that they were well-done drawings. They were all oddly shallow and superficial, devoid of depth. They were no different from caricatures drawn by some street artist. I tried doing a few more sketches, with basically the same result.
For me, this was pretty unusual. I had years of experience reconstructing people’s faces in a drawing, and flattered myself that I was good at it. Whether with a pencil or a paintbrush I could almost always come up with several mental images of what I was after with no trouble. I rarely struggled to decide on the composition of a painting. But now, with Menshiki as my model, not a single image came to me.
Perhaps I was overlooking something important. I couldn’t help but think that. Maybe Menshiki was adeptly hiding it from me. Or maybe it didn’t exist in him to begin with.
When the B side of the first of the four records in Der Rosenkavalier set finished I gave up, shut my sketchbook, and laid down my pencil. I lifted the needle, took the record off the turntable, and returned it to the boxed set. I glanced at my watch and sighed.
“I’m finding it very hard to draw you,” I admitted.
He looked at me in surprise. “In what way?” he asked. “Are you saying there’s some pictorial issue with the way I look?”
I shook my head slightly. “No, it’s not that. Of course there’s nothing wrong with your face.”
“Then what’s making it hard?”
“I wish I could tell you. It just feels that way. Maybe we still haven’t exchanged enough yet, as you put it. Haven’t traded enough seashells.”
Menshiki smiled, looking a bit perplexed. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
I stood up from the stool, went over to the window, and watched the birds flying over the woods.
“Mr. Menshiki, if it’s all right with you, could you give me a little more information about yourself? I know next to nothing about you.”
“Of course. I’m not trying to hide anything. No outrageous secrets or anything I’m trying to keep from you. I can tell you just about everything. What sort of information were you thinking of?”
“Well—for starters, I don’t even know your full name.”
“That’s right!” he said, looking a bit surprised. “Now that you mention it, you’re absolutely right. I was so caught up in talking I forgot to give this to you.”
He took a black leather holder from a pocket of his chinos and removed a business card. He handed me the card, and I read it. The thick white card simply read: